The Los Angeles Review of Books reviews Contraband: Louis Mandrin and the Making of a Global Underground by Michael Kwass (Harvard University Press)."Contraband is a sparkling micro-history nestled within a sprawling macro-history. The book reads as if Kwass has his finger on the zoom wheel of a mouse, here scrolling in to examine most intimate details of his protagonist’s childhood, there zooming out so that the vast mercantile connections linking Europe, the Americas, and the East Indies all appear in frame. Kwass transitions between the two deftly, at times imperceptibly, so that the picture is both expansive and highly detailed."Books & Ideas has a summer roundup with essays and reviews of interest to legal historians, including essays by Joan Scott and Ronald Dworkin.
The August issue of The Federal Lawyer is out, with a review by Henry S. Cohn of A Broken Regiment: The 16th Connecticut's Civil War by Lesley J. Gordon (Louisiana State University Press)--all reviews found here.
From The New Rambler is a review of Philip Wallach's To The Edge: Legality, Legitimacy, and the Responses to the 2008 Financial Crisis (Brookings Institution Press).
H-Net adds plenty of reviews for reading. For starters, James Corbett David's Dunmore's New World: The Extraordinary Life of a Royal Governor in Revolutionary America--with Jacobites, Counterfeiters, Land Schemes, Shipwrecks, Scalping, Indian Politics, Runaway Slaves, and Two Illegal Royal Weddings (University of Virginia Press) is reviewed.
"David’s biography of Dunmore shows a complex character filled with ambition and lapses of frustration. David demonstrates that there is still room for biographies in modern historiography. This lively account of Dunmore’s life illuminates his pivotal role in the history of America and the British Empire. This well-written monograph provides a wonderful glimpse into the world of Lord Dunmore and would be beneficial for Atlantic World historians and history buffs alike."Jeremy J. Tewell's A Self-Evident Lie: Southern Slavery and the Threat to American Freedom (Kent State University Press) is reviewed on H-Net, too.
Also up on H-Net is a review of Melissa Estes Blair's Revolutionizing Expectations: Women's Organizations, Feminism, and American Politics, 1965-1980 (University of Georgia Press).
Lastly, Kafka's Law: The Trial and American Criminal Justice by Robert P. Burns (University of Chicago Press) is reviewed on H-Net."Blair’s central argument is essentially this: members of mainstream women’s organizations played a mediating but crucial role in the successes of second-wave feminism. They did so in two specific ways. First, they helped “translate” national ideas and campaigns (most important, the decade-long effort to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment [ERA]) into programs and agendas that would address the needs of local communities. Second, because of their established presence in their home communities, long-standing women’s organizations helped to soften the local political environment by making more radical ideas seem less threatening."
The New Books Series has an interview with Eva Hemmungs Wirten in which she discusses Making Marie Curie: Intellectual Property and Celebrity Culture in an Age of Information (University of Chicago Press).Barak Kushner talks about his Men to Devils, Devils to Men: Japanese War Crimes and Chinese Justice (Harvard University Press) with New Books in Law.
And, Gyanendra Pandey discusses his A History of Prejudice: Race, Caste, and Difference in India and the United States (Cambridge University Press).
